1. Field of Invention
The invention relates generally to computer systems. More particularly, methods and apparatus for providing a reliable business to business message adapter generation tool.
2. Description of Relevant Art
In modern enterprise computing environments, a number of personal computers, workstations, mainframes, and the like along with other devices such as large mass storage subsystems, network interfaces, as well as interfaces to the public telephony systems are interconnected providing an integrated environment in which information may be shared among the various users. Typically, users may be performing a variety of operations, including order receipt, manufacturing, shipping, billing, inventory control, and other operations in which sharing of data on a real time basis provides a significant advantage over, for example, maintaining separate records and attempting to reconcile them later.
With the advent of large-scale business to business (B2B) e-commerce, it has become of paramount importance for those companies (i.e., e-businesses) involved in e-commerce to be able to reliably conduct automated electronic transactions with multiple partners. Unfortunately, however, due to the lack of a unifying standard, there are no consistent rules that govern these B2B transactions. As a result, an e-business must be able to successfully accommodate multiple partners, each of which can have, for example, a different message transport protocol, a different way of representing the content of B2B messages, and a different way to represent the address information that envelopes the B2B message content (i.e., the B2B message envelope) in order to successfully conduct an e-business transaction. In addition, since each e-business partner is an independent entity, each partner can follow independent schedules and policies such as when their respective systems are available. Therefore, the e-business can find it nearly impossible to reconcile the almost limitless number of possible combinations for all potential e-business partners.
One approach to solving the problems of cross platform communication is to use component based, multi-tier applications based on, for example, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) technology from Sun Microsystems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. J2EE technology, in the form of an J2EE server, represents a multi-tier design that simplifies developing, deploying, and maintaining enterprise applications. It enables developers to focus on the specifics of programming their business logic, relying on the J2EE server to provide system services, and client-side applications (both stand alone and within web browsers) to provide the user interaction. Once developed, business logic can be deployed on servers appropriate to existing needs of an organization.
Although J2EE server technology substantially solves many of the problems related to cross platform performance, there still remains the need to provide a mechanism whereby an e-business and its respective e-business partners can reliably conduct an e-business transaction.
In addition to being able to reliably conducting an e-business transaction, it is also very important for converting various messages into a native format by what is referred to as message conversion. Unfortunately, conventional approaches to message conversion relies on custom code that is manually written. As might be expected, this is tedious, time consuming, and error prone.
Therefore, in view of the foregoing, it would be advantageous and therefore desirable to have a B2B message adapter generation tool that takes as its two input classes, a sender message format and a receiver message format which are then heuristically analyzed to form a correspondence mapping between the two formats.
Broadly speaking, the invention relates to an improved method, apparatus and computer system for building a business to business message adapter in a multi-platform environment. The invention can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a method, a computer system, and an apparatus. Several embodiments of the invention are discussed below.
In one embodiment, a method of generating a business to business message adapter for converting a business message from a first partner schema to a second partner schema, and vice versa is disclosed. The first partner schema for the business message and the second partner schema for the business message are first loaded and displayed. A first partner schema link is selected as a current first partner schema link and a second partner schema link is selected as a current second partner schema link. If it is determined that the current first partner schema link correlates to the current second partner schema then the current first partner schema link and the current second partner schema link are link. If there is no correlation, then next links are recursively selected.
In another embodiment of the invention, a computer program product that includes a computer usable medium having computer readable code embodied therein for controlling the generation of a business to business to business message adapter that converts a business message from a first partner schema to a second partner schema, and vice versa is described.